For radiant heating? Not very effective? A pellet stove is not a woodstove. It uses a small clean fire that heats forced air blown thru heat exchanger tubes. Been running one for many years now as my main source of heat, replacing a small woodstove. Here are my impressions.
1. Very troublefree. In winter I add a bag of pellets(40#) every day and a half or so. Ours needs to be cleaned every 2 weeks or so, but this varies by the design. Beyond that, switch on for heat, switch off when not needed. It came with a thermostat but we have never felt the need to use it.
2. Noisy! The woodstove made almost no noise. This thing in the same place in the living room adds a significant ammount of noise. This also varies by design. And if I had realized just how noisy it is , I would have went with a quieter model. I have several times contemplated moving the whole thing outside into an insulated enclosure and pumping the heat inside to cutdown on the noise...
3. They consume a LOT of air for the combustion process. You really want them supplied entirely with outside air. Ours was not configured for this and the first season of use the house was a lot colder than the woodstove(that used outside combustion air) as the low pressure this thing created, sucked in cold air from every possible leak in the envelope. After the first season we re-configuring it to use exclusively outside air for combustion and to incorporate some outside air for the heatexchanger to add a slight postitve pressure to the house it has performed much better.
The new house will be radiant floor heat. I might like to have a fire device/feature in the house, but it will probably not be a pellet stove. Or if it is, it will not use convection or combustion blowers. If I do use pellets to heat, it will be in a boiler installed outside
